I used to work in a bacon factory. In the morning when I arrived all the lorries were there   delivering the pigs and I could hear them squealing. Then I’d go inside and the pigs, now with their throats cut, came along hanging from wires by their trotters and my job was to cut certain joints off the carcasses. I didn’t like the work and I think it had an effect on me. I started using heroin during that time and the two things are connected in my mind. In fact, all the bad things that happened to me began then.

It was my girlfriend who led me to heroin, though it wasn’t as though she encouraged me to take it.  We’d been together for quite a while and I was fond of her. When I found out she was using heroin I tried to talk her out of it but she ended our relationship and I felt it was the heroin that had taken her away. I was determined to see what it was that had such power over her so I followed in her footsteps, at first just using a bit on a Friday or Saturday but very soon it had complete control over me.

My parents were living in Guisborough. It’s nice up there and they were planning to buy their own house, but my mum wasn’t able to deal with my drug addiction. She lost her job and instead of buying a place of their own, my parents moved down here to South Bank because with my mam not working they couldn’t pay their rent and it’s cheaper here. They remain in South Bank whilst the place is knocked down around them. Their lives have gone downhill because of me and they don’t seem able to pick themselves up again.

I went to prison for a while and then I moved back in with my mum and dad here in South Bank. I had a relationship with a girl from South Bank after I came out of prison and we had two children. They live with their mam but I see them. I’m in a new relationship now and we’re getting a new house and my girlfriend, whose children are with her mam, intends to have them back with her.

It’s not easy to bounce back if you live in South Bank. It feels as though the place has been designed to make you depressed. All the empty houses and the demolition give the place a melancholy feel as though even the streets are telling you that there’s no purpose in trying to reform because that’s not what’s happening to them. No one’s intending to do anything about them - they’re for the chop. They’ve been condemned, and I’ve felt the same whilst I’ve lived here, but you can always go somewhere else and that’s what I intend to do.